Learning with an ocean between

Were there any obstacles that held you back from learning from each other? Not for me. Last semester, every student in our class was assigned a student from Queens university in Canada as conversation and English-German partner. 

First of all, think about how challenging it would be to have an entire conversation in English. Especially if you don’t have any confidence in your vocabulary. Furthermore, it isn’t easy to arrange an appointment for a phone call across two different continents and a time difference of 6 hours. 

I was surprised at how fun it was even though my English is not super strong. I learned that even with a small and simple vocabulary, having a conversation is possible because the native English speaker will usually adapt.  

So, it was a nice experience even though the given topics to discuss felt limiting due to the fact that you need very specific vocabulary, which can be hard if you don’t feel very comfortable with your English skill set. I learned a lot during the conversations and tried to use new phrases or words that I learned directly from the partner. It helped me a lot to become more confident in my English. Furthermore, it showed me that even if you don’t feel very confident in yourself don’t hold yourself back, because if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you would have succeeded. 

– Lea Romina, BM2 –